An Empirical Examination of U.K. Coaches’ Issues and Problems, and Their Support and Advice Networks

Abstract

Although there have been increasing calls to recognise the “voice of the coach” in both policy and research, there has been very little work that has asked the coaches directly: “what are your main issues and problems?” and “where do you go for support?” Instead, assessments and decisions have been made on these issues by the media, policy makers, support agencies, governing bodies, and researchers with results often reflecting the perspectives and interests of the latter. This paper presents new research with a reasonably representative sample of over 1,000 U.K. coaches that considers the issues and problems, and support networks from the perspective of the coaches themselves. The results suggest that coaches experience a wide range of problems but that they can be broken down into 17 main categories with places to play sport (e.g., facilities), problems with player–coach interaction, and problems with coaching knowledge and skills, being most frequently mentioned. In terms of support networks, the coaches tended to look “closest to home”: to themselves, their family/friends, participants and parents, and local coaching networks. Governing bodies and coaching associations tend to be less well used. Some implications for policy and practise are discussed.

Exploring the Influence of the Community-Based Sports Club Environment on the Support and Development of Volunteer Women Coaches in Ireland

“…This lack of formal or informal collaboration between club coaches needs addressing, in the first instance, to reap the benefits of working together. Once collaborating, volunteers use their networks with fellow coaches for guidance, conflict resolution, mentoring (Harman and Doherty, 2014 ), and solving coaching problems (North et al, 2020 ), which can then become the norm. These progressive and combined approaches of coach development could be introduced in the club and if established may lead to a positive club culture relating to coach development.…”

What Cognitive Mechanism, When, Where, and Why? Exploring the Decision Making of University and Professional Rugby Union Players During Competitive Matches

“…Due to the large amount of qualitative data drawn from the unstimulated and self-confrontation interviews, the data was analysed in two stages. The first stage employed qualitative coding and theme development procedures commonly used in sport coaching research ( Braun et al, 2016 ; Miles et al, 2020 ; North et al, 2020 ). Initially, verbalisations were attributed to Unstimulated responses and No-thought, Fast-thought and Slow-thought decision classifications.…”

Principles of Good Assessment Practice in Coach Education: An Initial Proposal

“…Sport coaches are central to achieving positive outcomes through sport (North, 2010;North et al, 2020) and as such, sport coaching is said to be societally important (North, 2017). Consequently, the roles and responsibilities of a sport coach are vast in both scale and scope.…”

“…Indeed, it could be argued that sport coaches represent one of the largest workforces on the continent. This is one of many reasons why sport coaching is increasingly of interest to governments around the world (North et al, 2019), as (in many cases) they invest considerable resources in recognition of the work undertaken (Lara-Bercial et al, 2020).…”